Theo Hobson is co-editor of Created for Love: Towards a New Teaching on Sex and Marriage.
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Was Oliver Cromwell a religious fanatic who loved banning stuff, or a pioneer of liberal values? Sunday’s Observer reported that a group of historians have dredged up some documents that suggest that he was seriously committed to religious freedom. Despite his reputation for brutally suppressing Irish Catholics, it emerges that Cromwell was open to them
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Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, the new film starring Emma Thompson, doesn’t know what sex is. It portrays a brief liaison between a widow (Nancy, played by Thompson) and a male prostitute as liberating for her, a blessed introduction to the world of sexual pleasure. The marital sex she knew was functional, orgasm-free (for her).
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I tried to dislike the writing of Sally Rooney. But I failed. I retain some resistance to Sally Rooney the cultural phenomenon, because this is largely about television adaptations of her books, which can only accentuate the negatives. I have an old-fashioned view of these things: only literature can represent a glamorous world with nuance,
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Is Channel 4 a public service broadcaster that should be saved from privatisation? Today’s Queen’s Speech, which lays the groundwork for the sale of the channel, is set to reignite that debate once again. But Channel 4’s increasingly dire output – and its obsession with shows about sex – shows privatisation might not be such a
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The Prime Minister told Tory MPs that church leaders had been ‘less vociferous in their condemnation on Easter Sunday of Putin than they were on our policy on illegal immigrants’. Lambeth Palace called this ‘a disgraceful slur’. So who is right? If the PM’s comment is confined to the archbishop of Canterbury, he appears to be technically
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When I was 17 I heard the name Dostovesky, and was enthralled. Just the name felt so glamorously intellectual, so deep. I began to read some of his novels, and my hunch was vindicated. A bit later I delved into his ideas, and my admiration became more nuanced. I partly admired his defiance of the
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You know the restaurant scene in Notting Hill? The Hugh Grant character defends the honour of his magical girlfriend when she is the butt of some sexist banter from some vulgar brutes, who don’t realise she is sitting round the corner. In many languages, says one, the word for actress is the same as the
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If you are worried about the uncertain fate of democracy in today’s world, what should you do? Become a human rights advocate, maybe, or a campaigning journalist. Or maybe you should consider becoming a Protestant missionary. In today’s Times, Danny Finkelstein draws our attention to the democracy index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. It
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27 min listen
On this week’s episode, we’ll hear from Douglas Murray on why he thinks that the Coronavirus is over. (00:51) Next, Nyrola Elimä on her family’s experiences as Uighurs living under the rule of the CCP. (08:27) And finally, Theo Hobson on why the different factions of the Church of England need to come together. (16:54)
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Two years ago the Church of England decided to delay any public discussion of its deepest division, over homosexuality, until 2022. So this might be the year in which an already troubled institution has a dramatic public meltdown. Or it might be the year in which the Church of England sorts itself out a bit.
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Dear God, Please help me to keep it together this Christmas. For it is a testing time as well as a joyful one. Help me to make sense of this season, in which the wonderful story of the birth of your Son jostles with all sorts of ghastliness. Give me the calm fortitude to bear
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When my son was about six he heard something at school about slavery but was not quite clear what it was all about. So I spelled it out. I told him that a slave was someone that someone else owned and ordered around and probably mistreated. I waited for the proper response of moral horror
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32 min listen
In this week’s episode: Can Cop26 deliver on its grand promises? In our cover story this week, Fraser Nelson assesses the state of the upcoming Cop26 summit in Glasgow and questions their very effectiveness in dealing with climate change in a world of global players with very different priorities. He is joined on the podcast
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It would be weird if my 13-year-old daughter didn’t say she was an atheist. It’s what you say in our culture when you’re that age. To be honest it would creep me out a bit if she was all pious. But she is getting confirmed into the Anglican faith. This is a piece of hoop-jumping
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I couldn’t get to sleep the other night for worrying about the future of liberalism. So I got up and put the telly on. Maybe there would be something soothing on, to help me forget my worries. There was a show on Channel 4 called My First Threesome. The voiceover explained that lockdown had led
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The Yorkshire Shepherdess was raised in suburban Huddersfield, not a sheep in sight. Amanda Owen was a romantic type who pored over pastoral images in library books – by chance, one image of some men at a cattle auction contained her future husband, Clive. She determined to head for the moors and, like some Thomas
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On Wednesday Radio 4 aired a programme called White Mischief, which promised to trace ‘where whiteness came from and how its power has remained elusive.’ It asked whether white privilege existed. Or rather it pretended to ask. It assumed that it does. Instead of directly admitting that it was putting forward one point of view,
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Not long ago I was a regular Tinder user. Having heard that gingers were romantically incompatible, I decided to mix work and pleasure and put this controversial claim to the test. I set up a sort of interview-date with a nice young lady called Laura, a former international gymnast who was working as a waitress,
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I’ve just been looking at photographs of Emma Raducanu again, this time focusing on her upper chest. She usually wears a pendant cross, which suggests that she is a Christian. Yes I know that some people wear crosses for fashion reasons, but I don’t think she’s in that camp. Maybe it’s more a sign of
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Justin Welby urges us, echoing Deuteronomy, to ‘choose life’, so that our children may live. It is an apt use of scripture, in the face of the climate emergency. But his performance on Radio 4 this morning was far from impressive. The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke of the need for ‘meaningful sacrifices’, but when asked
